The original question which motivated this section was: why are we sometimes incapable of adopting a new habit or abandoning an old one, despite knowing that to be a good idea? And the answer is: because we don’t know that such a change would be a good idea. Rather, some subsystems think that it would be a good idea, but other subsystems remain unconvinced. Thus the system’s overall judgment is that the old behavior should be maintained.
To me this is the key insight for working with subagent models. Just to add something about the phenomenology of it, I think many people struggle with this because the conflicts can feel like failures to update on evidence, which feels like a failure as a result of identifying with a particular subagent (see a recent article I posted on akrasia that makes this same claim and tries to convince the reader of it in terms of dual-process theory). Thus this is a case of easily said, difficultly done, but I think just having this frame is extremely helpful for making progress because at least you have a way of thinking of yourself as not fighting against yourself but manipulating complex machinery that decides what you do.
As a bonus to my developmental psychology friends out there, I think this points to the key insight for making the Kegan 3 to 4 transition (and for my Buddhist friends out there, the insight that, once grokked, will produce stream entry), although your milage may vary.
No, I meant 3 to 4. What I think of as the 4 to 5 key insight builds on this one to say that not only can you think of yourself as a manipulable complex system/machinery and work with that, it takes a step back and says what you choose to make the system do is also able to be manipulated. That’s of course a natural consequence of the first insight, but really believing it and knowing how to work with it takes time and constitutes the transition to another level because getting that insight requires the ability to intuitively work with an additional level of abstraction in your thinking.
Following on 5 to 6 is about stepping back from what you choose to make the system do and finding you can treat as object/manipulate how you choose (preferences; the system that does the choosing). Then 6 to 7 is about getting back one more level and seeing you can manipulate not just preferences but perceptions since they control the inputs that produce preferences.
So, just to check, we are still talking about the Kegan stage 4 that according to Kegan, 35 % of the adult population has attained? Are you saying that getting to stage 4 actually is actually the same as attaining stream entry, or just that the work to get to stream entry involves similar insights?
So I do think stream entry is way more common than most people would think because the thing that is stream entry is amazing and useful but also incredible normal and I think lots of folks are walking around having no idea they attained it (this relies, though, on a very parsimonious approach to what counts as stream entry). Whether my identifying it with Kegan 4 means the same thing as what that study from which that number comes does (which was itself, as I recall, not that great a study, and was lead by Lahey) is questionable since it depends on where you choose to draw the borders for each stage (the Subject-Object Interview manual provides one way of doing this, and is the method by which the number you mention was obtained).
My suspicion is that the number is much lower as I would count it, which I calculate as closer to 7% doing a Fermi estimate based on my own observations and other evidence I know of, even though a lot of folks (this is where I would say the 35% number makes sense) are somewhere in what I would consider the 3.5 to 4 range where they might be able to pass as 4 but have not yet had the important insight that would put them fully into the 4 stage.
So all those caveats aside, yes, I consider stream entry to be pointing at the same thing as Kegan 4.
Having studied and achieved stream entry (in the Vipassana tradition), I very much doubt many people have stumbled into it. Although for clarity, what % of the population are we taking about? Quick fermi: from what I’ve seen in the spiritual community about 1/1000 have achieved stream entry spontaneously / easily. Out of my bubble, I’d say 1⁄100 is spiritually inclined. Then I’d add another factor of at least 1⁄100 to control for my bubble being the Bay Area.
The reason why I doubt it is because most people will tell you (and have written) that it has take them (and people they know) many years and intense practice to get it.
I do think a lot of people have gotten A&P though.
To be clear I am appropriating stream entry here the same way Ingram has, which has much more inclusive (because they are much smaller and more specific) criteria than what is traditional. I agree with your point about A&P, and maybe I am typical minding here because I made it through to what matches with once returner without formal practice (although I did engage in a lot of practices that were informal that drug me along the same way).
Are Ingram’s criteria particularly inclusive? He has talked a bunch about most people who think themselves being stream enterers not actually being that, e.g.:
The A&P is so commonly mistaken for things like Equanimity, higher jhanas (third and fourth, as well as formless realms), and Stream Entry, or even some higher path, even on its first occurrence, that I now have to actively check myself when responding to emails and forum posts so that I don’t automatically assume that this is what has gone on, as it is probably 50:1 that someone claiming stream entry has actually just crossed the A&P. [...]
Overcalling attainments has become something of an endemic disease in those exposed to the maps. It annoys the heck out of dharma teachers who feel some responsibility to keep practitioners on the rails and in the realms of reality.
Right, if you’ve not had the later experiences (equanimity, fruition leading to attainment) you’re likely to mistake others for them, especially if you have a very squishy model of enlightenment and especially especially if you are trying hard to attain the path. My comment was more a reference to the fact that Ingram seems to view stream entry as a very precise thing relative to how it is talked about in theravada, which is why it seems possible that some of the above disagreement on numbers might be due to a different sense of what qualifies as stream entry.
I have my own fairly precise way of describing it, which is that you develop the capacity to always reason at Commons’ MHC level 13 (this is placed about halfway along the 4 to 5 transition in the normal Kegan model by Wilburl but I consider that to be an inflation of what’s really core 4), i.e. you S1 reason that way, deliberative S2 reasoning at that level is going to happen first but doesn’t count. At least as of right now I think that, but I could probably be convinced to wiggle the location a little bit because I’m trying to project my internal model of it back out to other existing models that I can reference.
When people try too hard, they set up strong expectations about what will happen. This works at cross purposes to awakening to just what is because it is a way of strongly grasping for something other than what is. Awakening, whether that be stream entry or enlightenment, requires surrendering or giving oneself over.
Importantly, though, trying like I’m talking about here is distinct from effort, which you need. You have to show up, do the practice, and wholeheartedly work at whatever it is you’re doing. But effort can be skillfully applied without trying or grasping for something.
jump up one more level to kegan 5 (<1% of the population) and it jives much more closely with survey estimates of .5% of the population having some sort of permanent attainment (the survey does not use the theravadan map)
To me this is the key insight for working with subagent models. Just to add something about the phenomenology of it, I think many people struggle with this because the conflicts can feel like failures to update on evidence, which feels like a failure as a result of identifying with a particular subagent (see a recent article I posted on akrasia that makes this same claim and tries to convince the reader of it in terms of dual-process theory). Thus this is a case of easily said, difficultly done, but I think just having this frame is extremely helpful for making progress because at least you have a way of thinking of yourself as not fighting against yourself but manipulating complex machinery that decides what you do.
As a bonus to my developmental psychology friends out there, I think this points to the key insight for making the Kegan 3 to 4 transition (and for my Buddhist friends out there, the insight that, once grokked, will produce stream entry), although your milage may vary.
(Did you mean to write 4 to 5?)
No, I meant 3 to 4. What I think of as the 4 to 5 key insight builds on this one to say that not only can you think of yourself as a manipulable complex system/machinery and work with that, it takes a step back and says what you choose to make the system do is also able to be manipulated. That’s of course a natural consequence of the first insight, but really believing it and knowing how to work with it takes time and constitutes the transition to another level because getting that insight requires the ability to intuitively work with an additional level of abstraction in your thinking.
Following on 5 to 6 is about stepping back from what you choose to make the system do and finding you can treat as object/manipulate how you choose (preferences; the system that does the choosing). Then 6 to 7 is about getting back one more level and seeing you can manipulate not just preferences but perceptions since they control the inputs that produce preferences.
So, just to check, we are still talking about the Kegan stage 4 that according to Kegan, 35 % of the adult population has attained? Are you saying that getting to stage 4 actually is actually the same as attaining stream entry, or just that the work to get to stream entry involves similar insights?
So I do think stream entry is way more common than most people would think because the thing that is stream entry is amazing and useful but also incredible normal and I think lots of folks are walking around having no idea they attained it (this relies, though, on a very parsimonious approach to what counts as stream entry). Whether my identifying it with Kegan 4 means the same thing as what that study from which that number comes does (which was itself, as I recall, not that great a study, and was lead by Lahey) is questionable since it depends on where you choose to draw the borders for each stage (the Subject-Object Interview manual provides one way of doing this, and is the method by which the number you mention was obtained).
My suspicion is that the number is much lower as I would count it, which I calculate as closer to 7% doing a Fermi estimate based on my own observations and other evidence I know of, even though a lot of folks (this is where I would say the 35% number makes sense) are somewhere in what I would consider the 3.5 to 4 range where they might be able to pass as 4 but have not yet had the important insight that would put them fully into the 4 stage.
So all those caveats aside, yes, I consider stream entry to be pointing at the same thing as Kegan 4.
Having studied and achieved stream entry (in the Vipassana tradition), I very much doubt many people have stumbled into it. Although for clarity, what % of the population are we taking about? Quick fermi: from what I’ve seen in the spiritual community about 1/1000 have achieved stream entry spontaneously / easily. Out of my bubble, I’d say 1⁄100 is spiritually inclined. Then I’d add another factor of at least 1⁄100 to control for my bubble being the Bay Area.
The reason why I doubt it is because most people will tell you (and have written) that it has take them (and people they know) many years and intense practice to get it.
I do think a lot of people have gotten A&P though.
To be clear I am appropriating stream entry here the same way Ingram has, which has much more inclusive (because they are much smaller and more specific) criteria than what is traditional. I agree with your point about A&P, and maybe I am typical minding here because I made it through to what matches with once returner without formal practice (although I did engage in a lot of practices that were informal that drug me along the same way).
Are Ingram’s criteria particularly inclusive? He has talked a bunch about most people who think themselves being stream enterers not actually being that, e.g.:
Right, if you’ve not had the later experiences (equanimity, fruition leading to attainment) you’re likely to mistake others for them, especially if you have a very squishy model of enlightenment and especially especially if you are trying hard to attain the path. My comment was more a reference to the fact that Ingram seems to view stream entry as a very precise thing relative to how it is talked about in theravada, which is why it seems possible that some of the above disagreement on numbers might be due to a different sense of what qualifies as stream entry.
I have my own fairly precise way of describing it, which is that you develop the capacity to always reason at Commons’ MHC level 13 (this is placed about halfway along the 4 to 5 transition in the normal Kegan model by Wilburl but I consider that to be an inflation of what’s really core 4), i.e. you S1 reason that way, deliberative S2 reasoning at that level is going to happen first but doesn’t count. At least as of right now I think that, but I could probably be convinced to wiggle the location a little bit because I’m trying to project my internal model of it back out to other existing models that I can reference.
What do you mean by trying hard? Why is this less beneficial than not trying hard? How not to try hard?
I have been practicing meditation for 2.5 years and I think I did not even make it to A&P. Might that be the sign that I am doing something wrong?
When people try too hard, they set up strong expectations about what will happen. This works at cross purposes to awakening to just what is because it is a way of strongly grasping for something other than what is. Awakening, whether that be stream entry or enlightenment, requires surrendering or giving oneself over.
Importantly, though, trying like I’m talking about here is distinct from effort, which you need. You have to show up, do the practice, and wholeheartedly work at whatever it is you’re doing. But effort can be skillfully applied without trying or grasping for something.
jump up one more level to kegan 5 (<1% of the population) and it jives much more closely with survey estimates of .5% of the population having some sort of permanent attainment (the survey does not use the theravadan map)